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Chapter 25: Religions, like Diseases, Are Many: Truth, like Health, Is One

If you look at it in this way, science will look like such an idiotic approach - based on such a stupid idea; even a small child can understand this. But you can also see the trouble. The scientist also feels it in moments when he is not so totally a scientist and is a little more human. He can see the point; but this problem is that unless something is observed, its existence is not proved. It remains only hypothetical.

Religion’s whole work is that corner which science is continuously denying: to know the knower, to see the seer, to feel the feeler, to be conscious of consciousness. Certainly it is a far greater adventure than any science can ever be because it is going into the scientist himself. The scientist may go to the stars, may find the ultimate division of objective reality, but he will remain absolutely ignorant about himself.

In India we have small earthen lamps - they are nothing but small cups made of earth filled with oil. They have a humbleness and a beauty, but a problem too. Because of that problem, in India there is a proverb: Diya tale andhera. ‘Underneath the lamp there is darkness.’ It is a cup; the flame is there, it throws light everywhere, all around - but underneath itself there is darkness.

Strange, but exactly true about the scientist: he makes everything lighted, but just underneath him, within him, darkness - perhaps more darkness than in anybody else. It seems as if he makes the whole world lighted, and all the darkness that he expels from every corner becomes concentrated in his own being.

You ask me, What is religion?

Religion is to make lighted that dark inner world where no science can reach, where no science even believes that there is anything to find.

Religion goes into that darkness and dispels it.

Hence, the experience of religion is called enlightenment.

The moment the darkness from within you disappears, you are transformed, transmuted into a new being. Your whole life will remain the same but with a difference, and a difference that really makes a difference.

You will eat when hungry, and you will sleep when tired; but these simple acts will have a totally different connotation, a different quality, a different intensity, a different flavor. You will be asleep and yet awake. You will be tremendously loving but never falling in love, because to fall in love is a contradiction in terms. In love one should rise, not fall. You will be continuously loving, showering your love - and not only on those who are related to you.

The ordinary love is person-oriented: you love your mother, you love your brother, you love your wife, you love your son. The love of an enlightened person is not person-oriented; it is just his flavor, his fragrance. Even if a stranger passes by the side of him, he will be as much a receiver of his love as anybody else. Whether he receives it or not, that is up to him. He can keep his doors closed, he can remain hard, invulnerable, closed; but that is his doing.